Summary: SHORT, but helpful look at the essence of prayer.
I am not an Anne Lamott devotee. So I do not read everything she writes. But I have read enough to know that she is a very good author and one that looks at spiritual realities from a different perspective.
So one day last month I was tired of all of my audiobooks I had been listening too and looked around to find another. I noticed that with my member discount at Audible, Help, Thanks, Wow was under $5. So I picked it up.
I had resisted previously because it is so short. In audiobook it is barely 90 minutes. In paper it is listed as 112 pages. But it must be a gift book sized pages.
However, for $5 I thought it was worth picking up.
I listened to it two days after listening to Palmer Parker's Let Your Life Speak. The two books, although not at all similar in subject had a similarity in spiritual direction. Both emphasized that the Christian life is not striving after looking good or being respectable.
Instead the Christian life is about being sinful, selfish people while also attempting to know Christ. Anne Lamott can be an acquired taste. She does not feel the need to wrap things up nicely. She knows the value of a bit of swearing at the appropriate time. She refers to God as she pretty frequently, she does not think that only Christians have spiritual insights.
The point of the book is that behind all of our pretense, most of the time we are praying one of three prayers, Help, Thanks or Wow. Each of these prayers come to use even if we are not comfortable with prayer, because they are part of who we were created to be.
I want to emphasize that this is a short book (and I think overpriced in Kindle and Hardcover). But it does have wisdom. Anne Lamott deserves her place as one of the Evangelical gadflies. And I think with time she has earned her a place of wise elder as well as gadfly.
Help, Thanks, Wow: Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook
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(originally posted on my blog, Bookwi.se)
Comments
I heard Anne Lamont interviewed regarding her book on prayer and thought it sounded interesting.
I'm glad someone has listened (read) now I will get it for sure.
Judy Turpen